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Somehow, Someday, Somewhere

… a reporter or editor will realize that they aren’t explaining anything with this:

In Piedmont, Quebec a rich and reputable cardiac physician appears to have murdered his children on Sunday. He was pretty well off – he had shared a $275,000 home with his wife. So we know he didn’t kill his children because he was “frustrated” by unemployment or underemployment. We also know his new house in Piedmont is “just minutes from the Saint-Saveur ski hill”. Hmm. I don’t think that was the problem. What else do we know?

Well, he’d just broken up with his wife, also a successful doctor, and she’d gone off on a ski trip leaving him with his five-year old son and three-year old daughter. Dr. Turcotte was “apparently distraught”. So he killed his children? Hmm. What else do we know?

Some people are concerned that doctors are “too reluctant to seek help for psychological distress”. Now if Dr. Turcotte had only sought psychological help. I’m sure he’d have told a counsellor that he was contemplating killing his children and then he could have been helped and then … Hmm. What else do we know?

Dr. Turcotte and his children were supposed to meet family members for breakfast with his children but he never showed up. Relatives immediately called police via 911 (emergency!) who broke into the doctor’s home and found him unconscious and his children dead. His relatives were instantly freaked out when the doc didn’t show before breakfast because they knew he was suicidal? Oh for fricking Christ-on-a-cracker sakes! They were so worried about his suicidality that they panicked when he didn’t show up and they left a five-year old and a three-year old in his care? Don’t they read the newspapers? Don’t they have any imaginations? Haven’t they heard this pathetic story before? Hasn’t somebody? The doctor’s family must feel just terrible and finding fault will likely do no good. Still, if we don’t realize that this was a critical missed cue, we will continue to see this kind of result. We will continue to see this kind of result.

Before this dreadful occurence, Dr. Turcotte was “a much-appreciated cardiologist” who “was extremely dedicated and had a very good reputation”. Because only under-appreciated men with bad reputations kill their children so what a surprise?

You know, people like Dr. Turcotte, “like other figures in position[s] of authority, can develop a sense of omnipotence. ‘They almost feel they have divine power, as if you are not allowed to question them. They do anything to hold onto that power…’

Throngs and throngs of men in positions of power kill their children. So that explains it. No? Not yet?

Try this. Psychologist Pierre Faubert says:

Some fathers in breakups target children to seek revenge on the mother… ‘The children become an extension of the mother. The father attacks her through them. The children become missiles aimed at the mother, who will be stricken by pain, guilt and shame.’

Now that sounds closer to an explanation that makes some sense, even though it’s virtually a throw-away line at the end of the article. It’s not the father’s power at work and in society that precedes these terrible events, it’s the father’s power within his family. Try this:

‘The profile of a family annihilator is a middle-aged man, a good provider who would appear to neighbours to be a dedicated husband and a devoted father,’ [Professor Jack] Levin said. ‘He quite often tends to be quite isolated. He is often profoundly dedicated to his family, but has few friends of his own or a support system out with [sic] the family. He will have suffered some prolonged frustration and feelings of inadequacy, but then suffers some catastrophic loss. It is usually financial or the loss of a relationship. He doesn’t hate his children, but he often hates his wife and blames her for his miserable life. He feels an overwhelming sense of his own powerlessness. He wants to execute revenge and the motive is almost always to “get even”.’ [emphasis mine]

Research from the States shows that family annihilators rarely have a prior criminal record. However, many experts believe there is often a prior pattern of domestic abuse. A report published two years ago in Britain by Women’s Aid, called Twenty-nine child homicides, found that, out of 13 families studied, domestic violence was a feature in 11. In one of the other two cases, the mother spoke of her ex-partner’s obsessively controlling behaviour. [emphasis mine]

Control, you see. Power. Wife-hating [or woman-hating] abusive and obsessively controlling behaviour – it doesn’t need to be physical abuse. When a woman leaves, she asserts a power that some men feel they have to take back by any means possible. He feels emasculated, de-manned, he’s a loser, as M. Gary Neuman pointed out in his book about why men cheat. Men have to feel like heroes, they have to feel like winners and if not, look out for the destruction they will cause. And yes, it is men and not women who are by far more likely to perpetrate these crimes – 95% of the time.

Why must men feel in control of their women and children? Why must they hold power over them? The answer is simple and complex. The answer is patriarchy. Read about it on the web. Google “feminism fathers who kill children” and you’ll find a kit-load of shit from the men’s rights and father’s rights “side” of this issue and you may wish you hadn’t. Here’s a taste from Angry Harry. His website came up first in my search.

Research from the States shows that family annihilators rarely have a prior criminal record. However, many experts believe there is often a prior pattern of domestic abuse.

Hardly surprising, eh? After all, these killings usually occur when relationships are breaking down. And so they do not come out of the blue. As such, one might well expect the amount of interpersonal abuse to escalate during such insecure times.

In fact, only a fool or a feminist would suggest otherwise.

I certainly cannot really imagine how I would feel if it looked as if my wife was going to leave me; taking away the home and the children – especially if these were my ‘everything’.

But I reckon that ‘murderous’ would very likely be a good description of how I would feel.

Notice, however, how Ms Lorna Martin tries to fob off the very idea that men have any justification for becoming enraged over the prospect of losing their homes and their children.

I suppose she reckons that they should just shrug it off! …

‘To the outside world, these crimes seem to come out of nowhere,’ continued Levin. ‘The perpetrators have not previously been involved in criminal behaviour. Nor do they tend to be on drugs or drinking heavily when they commit the crime. However, if psychologists had seen them in advance, they would have spotted the warning signs. They would have noticed how the person reacted to things not going his way – the irrational rage and the blaming of others. These people often also regard their partner and children as their own possessions.’

These men are ‘irrational’!

These men treat their partners and children and, presumably, their homes as their ‘possessions’!

How outrageous, eh? How strange! What kind of insanity possesses these men?

And women, of course, would never do or feel such things, eh?

No Sir. When women fight tooth and nail to keep hold of their homes and their children – through fair means or foul – they are not treating them as ‘possessions’. No Sirree. They are victims.

But here we have Ms Lorna Martin and the Guardian newspaper trying to demonise men for reacting badly when they are undergoing almost unbelievable torment.

Men “reacting badly”? Be still my heart. These stories are unbearable. The Guardian articlecited here tells stories so very similar that you could change the names and not know the difference. The stories are all the more unbearable when they are reported as though there is no critical work that leads to an understanding of what’s happening in this patriarchal frickin’ world. It’s fucktaballooned.

I’m as mad as Angry Harry but I wouldn’t dream of trying to rationalize murder just because I’m pissed! And you know what? If I did, I wouldn’t feel free to hang my rationalizations up on the web.

2 thoughts on “Somehow, Someday, Somewhere”

A few more empirical elements: Dr. Turcotte was a very religious man, a fundamentalist. He literally carved out the hearts of his wife’s children, with numerous knife blows. Upon murdering his children, he sent his wife an e-mail that was a men’s rights rant – quite akin to Marc Lépine’s suicide note. One sentence that was quoted to me went “Women have no heart and men have no balls.” His Hôtel-Dieu de St-Jérôme colleagues were so angry at his ranting justifications for the children’s killing that they refused to treat him when he was brought in; the ambulance had to take him to a Montreal hospital.
Yet in the following days, editorialists such as La PRESSE’s Mario Roy ( http://www.cyberpresse.ca/opinions/editorialistes/mario-roy/200902/25/01-830873-lhomme-de-piedmont.php )took up the masculinist motif of “men killing for lack of sufficient support,” pressuring the governement to give the men’s rights lobby everything it is clamoring for (as listed in the 2004 government-funded “Rapport Rondeau,” a pathetic hodge-podge of sophistryy, simplifications and outright didinformation, presenting men as discriminated against by the health and justuce systems – http://publications.msss.gouv.qc.ca/acrobat/f/documentation/2004/04-911-01rap.pdf ).

Wow. Thank you for this additional, crucial information Martin. It is much appreciated. Every now and again, I write a post of my own. Perhaps I’ll do so with this, or pass it on the a sympathetic member of the press – I know one. Maybe two.